Tag Archives: barter

So I was looking for home and love. Home keeps reconceptualising itself; love was ever thus. And now I am looking for my role in the revolution and my place in the new order. By this I mean the campaign against feudalism and the growth of something that somehow marries the best of socialism, capitalism and anarchism.

Maybe one day I’ll buy a little land, but something stops me now: not only limited choice, and not knowing where I want to settle and invest, but also concern that land ownership is such a problematic part of the old order. When one person owns, no other can be an equal on that territory, is my experience – no matter how careful, generous and skilful the parties, it seems.

I’ve been inspired by the words of a woodsman fellow weaver who made the below short film. Self-proclaimed ‘nettle nerd’ Allan Brown considers his nettle textiles a symbolic act of resistance, since wildgrowing nettles are the ‘fibre of the landless’.

Because sheep farming is tied up with land ownership, reduced bio-diversity and the meat industry, ultimately I wonder whether I should move away from wool – even the local, undyed, vegetable dyed and/or handspun wool that I prize and can ill-afford – and towards a more sustainable fibre source such as an abundant wild British plant.

At Seed eco-conference I met not only virtual friend, drop spinner and weaver Imogen Di Sapia, but also a Saori weaver, Erna Janine, freely weaving chaos principle. I have another friend, Richard Toogood, currently staying in a Neolithic reconstruction village and rough hewing his own primitive looms. Together with Allan we are cooking up ideas for a ‘Green Cloth Collective’: a Green Cloth Camp; a Green Cloth Fair; a Green Cloth Co-operative. How to make local labour viable in a globalised neoliberal world? Meantime I have some nettle yarn from Nepal out of which I’m planning a poncho. Despite that the Nepalese yarn cost me about twenty times less than if I’d spun it myself, the garment will still be pricey, alas, because of the cost of my labour at even about half the UK minimum wage. Perennial problem for craftspeople: I hate that the many cannot afford my goods. I wonder if a different world economics could alter this.

The money question. At times it’s been a relief to leave complicated barter arrangements aside and resort to the supposedly neutral tool that is currency. Like many, I have a long-held suspicion of money, but in moments like those, see its true value as a tool. I’ve never understood money markets, nor, till recently, been interested in economics at all, though now have become fascinated with the both, together and separately. Here’s why.

Contrary to what the dominant neoliberal culture would have us believe, there *is* a magic money tree, but it’s currently in the wrong hands. Money can be a common good, but the way we currently create it is not in the interests of the common good: money creation as debt forms a locking mechanism that keeps us hellbent on the impossibility of infinite growth: boom, bust, guzzle, crash. Humankind is great, but we let our shadow run the show. And the essence of our modern economic model inclines us to act more exploitatively than most of us would naturally act. *This is how it works (it’s a simplification, and it’s dry, but it’s important, so I invite you to read carefully and share widely – and of course feel free to contest).

Some fundamentals:

Firstly, apart from the tiny proportion of money that is represented by coins and notes, money is not a *thing*: money is a token, an agreement between parties, a currency that serves as a tool to be used to aid the fair exchange of actual things.

Next, a brief look at the monetary cost of *things*, that is, of goods and services:

Raw materials do not cost us money, because we do not pay money to the earth herself for the minerals and other raw materials that we extract. What we pay in money for raw materials is for the labour required to extract and process them. So the financial cost of every product or service is mostly constituted by the cost of labour, including what I will call ‘embodied labour’.

In our current monetary system, over and above the cost of labour and embodied labour, which represent the true monetary value of a thing, there’s an additional cost. On average in each monetary transaction, there is one winner and one loser, financially speaking: in order to keep afloat, the vendor must charge more for his product than the product is technically worth in terms of labour. This is because he has to pay not only the cost of labour input, but also the cost of money.

So now to explain the cost of money:

Only 3% of all money in circulation has been created by governments. The other 97% of money is debt that has been created by corporate banks who have special governmental permission to manufacture money for the purposes of lending. When a loan is agreed, the lender simply writes the money into being in their electronic ledger as they transfer it into your bank account. That’s right: they create it from thin air, as confirmed here by the Bank of England. The magic money tree is currently operated by corporate banks who commodify money, hiring it out as if it were a thing.

The borrower does not just pay a hire fee or service charge, but an exponentially growing rate according to volume and timescale: interest. As the borrower repays the loan, the money loaned is written off again by the lender: it ceases to exist. Meantime the lender has extracted surplus, in the form of interest, which far exceeds the labour costs of lending the money, and which constitutes profits for the bank’s shareholders. (Who holds the most shares and thus gains the most income from this? The richest few at the top of the pyramid.)

And back to the transaction of goods and services:

This ‘surplus’ is the additional cost that a vendor has to cover in each transaction in order to service his borrowing. Hence the consumer pays a price that is more than the true value of the actual good/service.

These individual transactions aggregate to constitute the wider economy. Because of the the moneylenders’ interest hoover, vendors charge more than the actual value of their goods and services in order to cover debt, and consumers are out of pocket. The dynamic is mathematically imbalanced: prices are higher than wages/salaries, and so wages/salaries can never cover the consumption of all the goods and services produced. This means that some vendors will make heavy losses, even while consumers everywhere borrow more and more to afford less and less. The result is an impossible quest for infinite growth: basically productivity booms as we chase the shortfall, and busts when we fail to make it. The failure is inbuilt, never-ending and relatively predictable. (So if you’ve a shrewd eye and a purse for gambling…)

Consider the human and environmental cost of all this. Most of us have our backs against the wall for at least some of the time, or are at risk of it, and fear or memory of this discomfort or strife compels us to earn harder to try and alleviate the impact of the next squeeze. Depending on our place in the hierarchy of the economic pyramid, we are either stuck on survival, running just to stand still, or, if we’re lucky/ruthless, climbing at great expense. (Perhaps even those at the very top feel they struggle financially to maintain their castles, yachts, grouse moors, oilfields.) It is hard for anyone not to feel poverty conscious. When do we have the leisure to consider the sustainability of the system, the sustainability of our households, the sustainability of our relationships, and the sustainability of our impact on the natural world?

Being debt-free as an individual does not aid the debt-based economy, since 97% of the population will necessarily be in debt (as per the current percentage of money that is debt). Keeping consumerism down does not aid the debt-based economy either: with insufficient custom, our businesses fail, and our families suffer. A debt-based economy requires consumption to be maintained at a certain level – a level that our planet cannot sustain.

Something has to change.

We reject hunting and gathering, by our land ownership, agriculture and desertification. We reject self-sufficiency, for it does not allow for specialisation. We reject communism, for it reduces us to the lowest common denominator. We contest capitalism, but even without land or property ownership, we all have capital on which to capitalise, be it time, energy, or competency. We had democratic socialism, where the welfare state looked after those in need and business gave opportunity to some. We now have neoliberalism, a barely-regulated capitalism in which voracious big business dismantles the state, looking after fewer and fewer and giving real opportunity to fewer and fewer. We rejected feudalism, but it has emerged in another guise.

Said Indian ecologist Satish Kumar of Schumacher College some years ago: ’It’s not poverty that’s the problem, but wealth.’

So what can we do about it? A pivotal measure could be the nationalisation of money creation: it could remove the locking mechanism that keeps us in wealth-hoovering, planet-devouring chains.

When things get sticky, our governments shake the magic money tree themselves and, in partnership with the central bank, perform Quantitative Easing. In other words, they print money. They can do this in any number of ways – they don’t necessarily literally print banknotes, but may create digital money to invest in particular ways with the aim of stimulating growth in a certain sector, banking on positive knock-on effects for the wider economy. It doesn’t always work, and depending on the way QE is deployed, sometimes it serves only to create yet another trickle-up mechanism to boost the already rich. But the point is this: that *governments*, the folk we elect to work for the common good, can get involved in money creation.

So what if a government took the powers of money creation largely into their own hands? President Lincoln did this successfully with ‘Greenbacks’ before he was assassinated; JFK apparently was moving in a similar direction, and other isolated economies may have done and be doing this around the world.

positivemoney.org proposes such a sovereign money system in which a friendly government works in partnership with a committee at the national bank who are independent of the governing party for the sake of neutrality. A sovereign money system would not be gameable in the way that money creation as debt is currently gameable, and should thus eliminate and/or dilute the mechanisms by which wealth is currently hoovered upwards and concentrated in the hands of a few. Sovereign money could begin to create a stable economy in which costs, wages and prices all matched. Just imagine what we’d then all be freed up to achieve if we weren’t hellbent on the myth of growth.

–:o:–

And meantime what can we as individuals do to resist, prepare and act otherwise? Here are a few suggestions.

I love being in the driver’s seat. To eat a meal, to admire the view, to take us to the next place, or to write. (It’s amazing how one can slip quietly but extremely uncomfortably into the passivity of the passenger seat. iNunca más! Not that there’s a passenger seat in my van – Murphy lives there instead.)

Many of you will have seen the beautiful Etsy piece that Julie Schneider wrote about me and which Alice Carfrae illustrated. Here’s the backstory (especially for makers and wanderers who could benefit themselves).

I pitched to Etsy about my ‘Inspiring Workspace’ (the name of their series of features on makers’ studios around the world). A key theme was the interplay between craft and place. Julie picked it up, offering the highest praise. She then interviewed me by phone from New York, quietly listening long and inviting me to go on and on spinning the yarns beyond our allocated time, with only the lightest prompts from her. She’d invited me to make a photographer recommendation, and by chance, pro colleague Alice, whom I hadn’t seen for years, was due to be back here from Asia for a few months. I asked Alice for some dawn and dusk shots, as well as daytime ones, and we became aware that photographing the van interior, and, especially, seeking to capture the interior and the spirit of the location in the same shots, would be a huge challenge (not to mention the vain weaver at work who needed flattering lighting and lengthy post-production to minimise the rings under her eyes). Alice kindly suggested staying with me overnight to get some night-time shots as well. Etsy paid for part of Alice’s time, and I paid for some more with weavings.

For reasons that I can’t broadcast, I seldom carry passengers. Nor has anyone else stayed in the van with me: it is a space designed for one woman, one loom and one large dog. (Although I will soon have two accordions. What on earth would I have done had I been a cellist? Obviously the piano had to find another home, though I did wonder.) It’s the biggest possible vehicle I can get up the smallest possible lanes. It’s for working and sleeping in, not socialising.

I collected Alice midmorning and after briefly exchanging ideas about the most beautiful spots on Dartmoor (of which there are millions) we nattered as I drove: daily life, environmental, social and gender politics in Delhi, Beijing, the Hebrides, England; loves past and present; old friends and workplaces in common. My van’s not easy to drive on these tiny, crowded roads, but with the professional challenge ahead we talked contracts and vignettes too as branches tore at our sides (Alice airbrushed out the dents afterwards).

Choosing a photographic location was almost as tricky as choosing a night-pitch alone – every detail matters! We found a spot, but the bracken was too tall. We found another spot, but there were people there, and another, ditto. We found another spot, but the road was in shot. We found another spot with grass in front and a panorama of tors if we faced west as desired – though we would need to relocate for the sunset.

We began photographing, though the overcast light that Alice would normally find perfect left us with insufficient light inside the van. She got some good outdoor shots, though I twitched when someone zoomed by leaning on their horn shouting an abusive ‘Pikey!’. (C’est comme ça at times; you have to be brave.)

In the sunset spot there was someone else overnighting, so we had to be really clever about photographing from angles that didn’t show his van – it’s just not as romantic, being parked up with neighbours, is it? (My natural instinct is to find the most remote spots, though sometimes I welcome the security.) We barely got a sunset, as, despite the forecast for Dartmoor’s typical changeability, the (even more typical) damp grey settled in. Hard as we tried, we were not quite ready for the three thirty second breaks of amazing light we got – although we snatched a few shots nonetheless.

We worked until 10pm, when I cooked supper, and heroic Alice also went outside after that hoping to shoot the warmth of the 12V battery-powered interior lights of the van starlit against a turquoise sky. But the damp grey at night offered only a velvet black in too stark a contrast with our indoor lighting, so that shot was not to be.

Dear Alice slept (fitfully) on a mattress on the floor, and, exhausted and overstimulated, I didn’t sleep much better either – though it was nice to be in a beautiful spot with a friend.

Not an early riser, I nonetheless awoke early as usual, and at 6am the first hint of sunlight was showing over the hill, so I reluctantly roused Alice, who was straight outside again with her camera within seconds.

We’d done three hours’ work before breakfast, getting some of our best shots in the soft, sweet morning light (though it certainly took a while for my face to wake up).

Murphy was ever-patient, as his walking routine was neglected – but he enjoys being out and about in different places meeting people.

Finally the light was on our side and the camera rolled until after lunch, when, with almost all of Etsy’s shotlist covered and with some spontaneous shots besides, we finally packed it in, packed up and got back behind the wheel, seeking out an ice-cream reward on the way back to Alice’s house.

After much backing and forthing between Julie and I and Alice and I and Alice and Jen, the photographic manager for Etsy on this assignment, the article was published. I knew I needed to be prepared to make the most of the exposure, but I was completely unprepared for the overwhelming wonder of people’s enchantment: I certainly had not allowed time to spend most of the subsequent fortnight responding to people’s incredibly affirmative comments where they shared deep feelings and snippets of lovely stories, though it’s important to. It’s been amazing: I can’t thank you all enough.

My stats (views, favourites, likes, subscribers) spiked tenfold in some cases, and in a week my turnover exceded that of my best month yet in this two-year-old business. Phew. A lot of hard work, but it’s going places. (Obviously I’ve had to cut my living costs right down in this travelling life.)

Even more special are the amazing contacts made as I catch a glimpse of your lives – in vans and RVs, on boats and crofts – and your projects that are visions of mine too – growing vegetables and dye plants; raising sheep and awareness; musicmaking, wordsmithing, spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing, travelling, dreaming, remembering, wishing, working, working, working for change. I’m really glad to know you’re out there, and hope our paths will cross in the flesh sometime (I’d love to build an itinerary of parking-up spots, and though I can’t imagine bringing this old van to the US, the Americas are seemingly calling me, so maybe one year…) The number of you who have expressed thanks for my inspiration is the most heartening bit. A somewhat desperate bid for survival, I nonetheless felt selfish deserting the worthy cause of teaching in mainstream education, but if I can still inspire, then I’m still contributing.

Says Gayathri from India: ‘I just pinged to say that I loved the article … it’s by far the best post I’ve read on Etsy! I have never sent a convo to anyone other than my buyers. It was such a beautiful article and I couldn’t just sit here without appreciating you. It would be an understatement if I say that your wonderful journey gives me so much hope and happiness. Thanks a bunch for making me smile 🙂 keep living that beautiful life for all of us! Lots of love from across the oceans’

Says Nicole from Quebec: ‘Eloise, you are an inspiration. I think I could do this with my soapmaking! I would like to bring my horses along….. Thanks for sharing.’

Says Emm from Wales: ‘Your story and life style is inspiring. My dream but I am a lone parent of four. Feeling a bit trapped but you give hope for a one day change.’

Says Frances from North Carolina: ‘My daughter and I are just now starting to clean out our house and get it ready to sell. Sitting in the yard is a new 5th wheel camper and a truck. We are are embarking on a similar journey and I have been wondering if I should close our business or try to take it with us. After reading your story and seeing that it is possible, I feel so much happier now, knowing it can be done. Thank-you so much for sharing. You made my day! Keep on going. Live the life you love.’

Says Jenn from New Hampshire: ‘Love this feature! You are an inspiration and a fabulous weaver. I have often thought of doing what you are doing, but here in the US. Maybe we should start a small traveling colony of Etsy sellers:o) Wouldn’t that be grand!’

Says Lisa from the Treehouse: ‘This has moved me. On many levels. Thank you for sharing your spirit and work and words. You may have just started a movement.’

And this is just a few of the few hundred.

I haven’t started a movement, but there IS a movement. A ‘normal’ way of life is failing ever more people who, squeezed and wrought, must, like me, think outside the box in order to make do. Wellbeing is not a luxury: everything goes wrong without it.

(By the way, if you have questions about the small-but-dealbreaking pragmatics of a lifestyle like mine as you work out an alternative way forward for your own life, then please do post them in the comments below. I generally prefer holding this kind of discussion in the public domain so that more people can benefit by reading and/or joining in – plus then I don’t have to type the same things loads of times; I’ve done little weaving this month!)

Me, me, me. I’m extremely lucky – and pretty damn resourceful. Brought up with no money, no property, with state benefits and state education, I nonetheless had art, craft, culture, animals, wilderness, business and critical thinking capital (not to mention kind and talented friends and family). England voted to leave the EU, but I have dual citizenship and the right to a European passport, so I’m just fine. So many are so much less well off. And here I have to get back onto the soapbox, and cannot keep it out of my ‘weaving’ blog, because I think in systems, and the whole lot is connected, and there has been more drama that I want you to know about.

I don’t think that socialism holds all the answers, and, understandably, a socialist is having grave difficulty holding together a party that is half constituted of neoliberals, but he is the only person anywhere near the premiership whom I trust to recognise what are NOT the answers (inequality; austerity; neoliberalism; authoritarianism; war) and resist the kind of constant compromise that leaves a Labour government looking so very similar to a Conservative one. Corbyn, McDonnell and their young team are intelligent, sensitive, passionate, steadfast and dynamic. I think their minds are open to new solutions: I’m wondering whether inequality could be addressed by state control (as opposed to global, corporate bank control) of our monetary supply creating a non-debt-based economy. It seems to me that money creation as debt is basically the modern feudalism, whilst fairer distribution of currency would mean fairer access to markets so that they worked for the many – markets which kept well away from services (currency, health, education, welfare, infrastructure) that are at risk from distortion by commodification. Obviously this plays havoc with the international financial markets, and I’ve no idea how a transition could be made, let alone smoothed, but I do think that making survival a bit less hard for the masses would free us up to better look after each other and the environment. (And if overpopulation is a concern: we breed more under stress, don’t we?) Corbyn’s the only one who could do this, I think.

I think the UK Green Party offers some such answers, but they are so far off being elected that I joined the Labour Party instead. Ideally I’d like to see the parties of the left join together. Goes the old adage: ‘the reds ain’t green enough, and the greens ain’t red enough’. And the yellows (the Liberal Democrats) are committed to electoral reform so that we actually get democracy, probably in the form of Proportional Representation. In post-referendum hysteria during a week of intense passion nationwide, fearful news stories, keen motivation and seeking to support the emergence of a Progressive Alliance, I also briefly joined the Lib Dems. I shout my politics from the treetops: my personal Facebooking is largely campaign activity. Intelligence agents for the centrist neoliberals of the Labour Party who have been trying to unseat soft-but-firm-left Corbyn by purging the party of newly joined ‘Corbynistas’ have seen my hundred pro-Corbyn posts and they’ve also unearthed a pro-green-and-yellow remark of mine, and expelled me from the Labour Party, ostensibly for the latter reason. I am distressed to be disempowered by being denied a vote in the upcoming leadership election to renew Corbyn’s mandate, but on the other hand I am furiously empowered. I’ve replied to Labour’s secretary general, who seems to have been blocking democracy at every step as hundreds of thousands of us subscribed on the explicit understanding that we could vote, then had to pay an extra £25 for the privilege as the goalposts were moved to exclude us, then paid again, then had to be screened all over again, then went to court, then won the ruling, then lost the appeal, then got expelled as well. (And when a whole lot of people get blown up by a terrorist over there, it’s got a lot to do with this shit happening right here.) Yesterday a young journalist from the Guardian (Britain’s most major centre-left intelligent broadsheet newspaper, who’s been disappointingly cynical on Corbyn too at times) contacted me out of the blue on Facebook, asked to talk, and asked whether my page was covered in pro-Corbyn material. Oh yes, says I, how did you guess? Laughs, does he. And will I tell him my story? Oh yes, says I, for sure.

So we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned for the next instalment, and please comment and share, share, share, and meantime I’ll perhaps see some of you at Exeter Green Fair (Devon, UK) on Saturday as I show off my wares and meet some more good folk.

I am SO grateful for all you taught me, and SO glad that you are shrinking small into a distant past.

Yours not at all,

Eloïse Liberty Sentito

For weeks I’ve been writing and rewriting and rewriting a short(ish) essay (not a rant, er…) on monetary reform, and also feeling that not addressing the question of whether the UK should stay in the EU is remiss at such a time.

So on the latter: to quote a friend, ‘I’m a nationalist and also an internationalist’. Basically, whilst I’ve some sympathy for individualistic tendencies – ahem – it seems that most arguments for ‘Brexit’ are fuelled by resentment that Europe is limiting the ever-mushrooming right wing freedom to exploit. (Anyway, isn’t a slower-growing economy a stabler one, and better for the majority?) Besides, though our little isle is crowded, overall (reports our tax office, HMRC), immigrants are more than paying their way. So broadly speaking, a vote to leave the EU this year looks like a vote for aggressive Neoliberalism, whereas for social justice, democracy and the environment, I’ll vote to stay. How about you? (With the recent election of a Muslim Labour Mayor of London, I have hope for our country, and also, unusually, pride.)

There, that’s some of the big topics, er, well, not ignored. The question of monetary reform will have to wait, as I’ve plenty to report about weaving these isles.

There have been barterings: here are some beautiful pictures by Californi-Italian coppersmith Marcella of Unicorn Vibration, who swapped a pin like this one for some remnants as photographic backdrops and sent me the results to share:

Pennanula brooch by Mannuela of Unicorn Vibration

A DSLR camera barter is under discussion – by the skin of my teeth (typically) I’ve got this far without one.

And here are a couple of small picnic blankets I’ve made that might constitute my offer for a dauntingly heavyweight, three-octave, billion-buttoned, Hohner Contessa accordion I’ve been offered:

(At 4′ x 4′ they may be too small for the accordion barter proposer’s family picnics, so they’re likely to come on general sale soon – stay tuned. SC, let me know your thoughts.)

I keep thinking of additional items to add to my barter wishlist – please keep an eye on that page for updates if you’d like to consider a swap.

There has been lots of weaving, and I’ve been commissioned to make a poncho that will disguise its wearer as a roe deer (just for the romance of it, as far as I know). A lovely challenge.

And there has been media interest: you may have seen my post about getting teleported (well, sort of) right into the Radio 4 studios for (an albeit brief) live broadcast of my thoughts on camper-travel, only for them to run out of time. Well, it was exciting anyway, but even more exciting is that the programme’s producer (no less) has got back in touch, as they may want to chat with me on another programme. Just so I can say it again: that is BBC Radio 4, the most prestigious station on one of the most respected broadcasting corporations in the world – and the people I’m in contact with are from one of the best and hardest programmes to get onto, says my music-plugging friend who knows them.

And there has been elegant hobknobbing with other craftspeople: every year the very high-end Contemporary Craft Festival graces nearby modest little Bovey Tracy. Every year I think I should apply but am unkeen to commit to specific whereabouts in midsummer six months hence, unable to muster the pitch fee, and unsure that I can summon the impressive coherence required for a successful application, or the necessary glamour of a super-chic mini-gallery that is every stall. However every year at the last minute a certain friend (thank you CD) conjures a spare ticket to the private view and so most years I get to dress up and race around the labyrinthine marquees finding plentiful inspiration, greeting maker-friends and spilling free champagne. This year said music-plugging friend whom I happened to speak to the same day after receiving the Radio 4 email (just checking you heard that) happened to be also going alone so we hooked up. It’s a fun, high-speed, stylish feast for the imagination, full of the Westcountry’s most interesting folk and UK makers from far further. I told myself that it was a work outing, and remembered to take cards (though didn’t think, in the warmth, to wear a wove). However I let myself off the hook and decided not to network but to enjoy. Dear ticket-conjuring friend also conjured an Indian meal out afterwards.

And then the next day I felt that the two hour private view simply hadn’t been enough and that, as well as only having had a quick look at fewer than all the stands, I was missing a trick. I do lots of networking online, so what was I doing dipping out of the face to face opportunity?

I loved being in the Hebrides last year feeling like an explorer on a journey of enquiry meeting their wool people and investigating their weaving traditions (and everything else) – and doing so in a way that was so much more free and spontaneous than in academic research. Why not put my own home area under the magnifier?

With radio on my mind and a warm recollection of profound conversations I’d had with wise lecturers in an education research project I’d conducted in my last chapter of life, I decided to return to the festival with a dictaphone to extend the snippets of conversation I’d begun with some intrigueing textile artists and weavers.

Light, colour, technique, tools, process, livelihood, story and business model were my themes (far too many of course). Valérie Wartelle (wetfeltscapes), Sarah Beadsmoore (silk scarves), Nick Ozanne (silk scarves) and Graeme Hawes (glassware) were my interviewees (I’d have loved more, but ran out of time, articulacy and battery). I’m just editing my four audio recordings and will share them with you here shortly.